Sunsoft and the Sega Genesis
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- Опубликовано: 3 окт 2024
- We take a look at the software that Sunsoft developed and/or published on the Sega Genesis and Mega Drive.
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Opening 3D Logo By:
Jan Neves
RUclips Page - / jan3d
Episode Notes:
1. Games covered:
Tel-Tel Mahjong (1990)
Batman (1990)
Tel-Tel Stadium (1990)
Shikinjoh (1991)
Super Fantasy Zone (1992)
Lemmings (1992)
Batman: Revenge of The Joker (1992)
Superman: The Man of Steel (1992)
Beauty and the Beast: Belle's Quest (1993)
Beauty and the Beast: Roar of the Beast (1993)
Blaster Master 2 (1993)
Aero the Acro-Bat (1993)
Flashback (1993)
Daze Before Christmas (1994)
Bubble and Squeak (1994)
The Pirates of Dark Water (1994)
Panorama Cotton (1994)
Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel (1994)
The Death and Return of Superman (1995)
Aero the Acro-Bat 2 (1995)
Scooby-Doo Mystery (1995)
Justice League Task Force (1995)
![OsamaSon - ik what you did last summer [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/4DIQDnu3mr4/mqdefault.jpg)
Panorama Cotton is genuinely amazing. I couldn't believe it was running on a megadrive.
Possibly the most impressive MD/Gen game. Hard as balls, expensive as heck but still an awesome game
Looks like a good 32X game.
@@MOLTEN0 vW2v×-×z-×w××~××wz
That’s the power of the Motorola 68,000.
Great point about the sound. You practically could guess if a Megadrive/Genesis game was made by japanese or western programmers just by listening to the quality of the sound and music.
Daze Before Christmas also allowed Santa to transform into a nasty version of himself who attacked with the sack and had shoot'em up stages where he rode his sled.
Earthworm Jim and Mega Turrican were the only non-Japanese games I can come up with with really great music.
dont forget about the games jesper kyd composed! red zone and batman the animated series in particular are some of my favorites. theyre definitely an aquired taste but if youre a fan of hard hitting industrial techno, youll love his stuff.
Attacked with his sack? You know you get put on a list for doing that?!
@@youisiainti like Ecco’s music. I like Vectorman’s music.
The stuff from Comix Zone is pretty good. There are actually a fair few more western developed games with good musical direction.
People often underestimated the sega genesis's ability to do great sound, or music. I loved both the batman, and superman games on the genesis. Also Technosoft showed just what the genesis was capable of with the thunder force series, as lightning force is one of the best games on the genesis period.
As he said, it required to design sound tools from the ground up and to ignore Sega's toolbox for sound to get decent sound/music out of the console. It has happened for sure, but wasn't the norm by a long shot.
Its sound was grainy compared to the SNES...
@@hjames78
I mean sadly that is the conclusion. There were exceptions but the majority were anywhere between mediocre to ear piercingly horrible.
The fact the majority of the games with some of the worst sound were US produced ones says a lot.
@@JohnDoe-wq5eu they couldnt make the sound, sound like real instruments like in the SNES so i guess they did their best.....
@@hjames78
That's just it they definitely didn't "do their best".
I would even say most didn't even try at all.
We know from the NES that impossible things are very possible. (Castlevania 3 in Japan had an extra sound chip in it to make it sound better)
But with the Genesis even though it was capable of doing incredible music (Streets of rage 2 Strider) it seems like outside of Japan mostly in the US they just either couldn't get their head around how the sound chip worked or just didn't want to try to. There's a reason the perception that the Genesis had horrible sound is so popular. There were a lot of really crappy sounding games.
It's not about drivers, it's about composer, in this case great Naoki Kodaka. You can play his melodies with fart sounds and they will still sound great.
The soundtrack in Batman, Streets of Rage 1 & 2 & Dragon's Fury are 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
@Daishin no Dōro Outrun 2019 and Galaxy Force II had great soundtracks as well.
Seems like when Sunsoft develops a game, it tends to be the best, when they're publishing other companies games, it tends to range from good to crap easily.
Dude....youre like always on point with your timing! Was just needing something to watch
I almost forgot Sunsoft.
Thanks for the memories.
It's weird how Batman: Revenge of the Joker was such a cool game on the NES (where it was known as 'Return' of the Joker) with some excellent graphics and sounds, yet comes off as so average on the 16-bit Genesis.
1:20 WOAH now that is an immediate improvement from the last video. I can find no fault in your videos anymore boss. Good on you for following through. I really appreciate the change even if it is just the font type.
I never had a Master System, only had the Genesis, but never had any Sunsoft games on it. However I had a NES with Journey to Silius - probably Sunsoft's best game, from soundtrack to how simple yet easy to understand the gameplay is.
It's amazing journey to sillius was supposed to be a terminator game before the licence expired.
That's awesome. I was going to send this person a message about Jounrney to Silus and Nes version of return of the joker. You beat me to it.lol
@@MarshCreature Yep. And all they had to do was to create a random 2 minute "intro" and suddenly "definitely-not-Terminator-anymore".
@@zanon__ they also had that completed Superman game for NES and even made a new title screen calling it "Sunman" when the license ran out and changed the colour of "sunman's" sprite, but they ended up never releasing that as a game. Which is a shame, it's pretty good, you can play the leaked ROM of it today. It's not quite as good as their Batman game for NES but it's still worth a playthrough.
Looking briefly at the Genesis superman game though, it seems they definitely reused a lot of ideas from the unreleased NES one. Makes sense, don't want to throw away all that work on designing a game. Repurpose it instead.
@@duffman18 It only makes sense, because back then they didn't have the "freedom" they have nowadays to just create and dump assets into the games - after all, they had limited storage and limited memory, which is why most games were nearly fully optimized for the system, with "a few" bugs, instead of nowadays where they have so much freedom, games are released with GBs worth of unused assets, buggy code and glitchy messes. Essentially, the amount of freedom we now have to make games made us very complacent and lazy, at least, in the west.
Congrats on 50k subs! You deserve it. I'm addicted to your Saturn videos, they are getting me so hype and I'm picking up many games I didn't know about. Thank you SLX!
I actually remember the game "Bubble & Squeak" being out when I was a kid, since I was able to see a colorful advertisement for it in one of my comic books that I had growing up in the 1990s, and the characters also kinda remind me of Calvin and Hobbes because of how they looked in the game. ;)
Pirates of Dark Water is bittersweet because it gives the series a level of closure the cartoon never did. The cutscenes appear to be taken directly from the show's storyboards, so I have every reason to believe the closing cutscene is how the series' closing scenes would have gone down.
I LOVED Batman on the Genesis. My game store had the early Japanese version a year before we got the game and I bought it and made the adjustment on my Genesis to cut the opening bigger for the Japanese carts to fit.
Its incredible to see how far you have come. I love your vids. Thank you.
I appreciate the message. Thank you.
Ah there's nothing like Sega at 2 in the morning
At 3 it's even better ;)
It's never too late for sega
Sunsoft's fall from grace in the early 90s was downright tragic. They were arguably the best third party devs on the NES not named Capcom or Konami (HAL Laboratories had essentially become a first party dev in all but name by this point), but once they started outsourcing major franchises like Blaster Master and Batman to western developers they basically became another Ocean. To me it always felt like Revenge/Return of the Joker was sort of a watershed point that really demonstrates the difference between what people expected from Sunsoft in the 8-bit era, versus what they were becoming in the 16-bit era. Developed internally by Sunsoft for the NES and one of the standout late-era titles on that platform, with incredible graphics, a pumping soundtrack, and tight, if very difficult gameplay. The Genesis game (as well as the unreleased but finished SNES port), developed by Ringler Studios, is a great case study of how a port of a great game can get screwed if handled by incompetent programmers who don't seem to understand how to make use of a system's potential. It should have been an even better version of an already great game, but instead it's worse than the NES game in every respect. Even the graphics look more attractive on the NES, Batman looks straight up derpy in the 16-bit versions.
In the late 80s the Sunsoft brand served as a recommendation; by the mid-90s it had become a warning.
what do you mean "ear torture"?! The Pirated Of Dark Water has GREAT soundtrack, it has a very consistent tone and feels like a concept album if you listen to it outside of the game! Besides, the standard GEMS presets are very much in place here, with percussive elements enhancing the tropical theme.. it never ceases to amaze me how the same music can have such an opposite effect on different listeners.....
Indeed. I couldn’t stand it.
I always find it odd that most people can’t stand Road Rash 1 soundtrack but love Road Rash 3’s.... I absolutely love RR1, somewhat enjoyed RR2 (too stereotyped for my taste, Vermont’s song is amazing though), but RR3 had such an amazing composition using the worst samples ever (was it made using standard GEMS?! the drums sound like plastic and the guitars like the worst Casio keyboard...) and thanks to that I cannot stand the RR3 soundtrack...
@@SegaLordX I know and you know what the genesis sound chip is capable of in the right hands. Tracks from Rocket Knight Adventures, castlevania bloodlines, Alisia Dragoon, Valis, Adventures of batman and Robin, Thunder force iv, Desert Strike, Midnight Resistance, Sonic(all of them), Streets of rage of course and so many more I know well are so epic and with quality that almost resembles cd, so pure... I even dare to say that this system was the one with better music, music that aged better than other systems with more advanced sound chip like Super Nintendo. Sorry for my English, hugs from Portugal, and keep up your fantastic work
@@AdrianoSnake Snes had loads of orchestra music, but no techno-funk. Genesis had the best techno-funk, probably what toejam and earl: Panic of Funkatron was about. All the music named in this video is techno-funk. I miss the music from those days. Modern game music is either orchestra or hard rock.(metal).
Wait you Americans never got Super Fantasy Zone? Damn, that was one of my favourite games as a kid in the UK. I'm constantly finding out about games that I had no idea were European only or never got released in the US. A lot of them make sense like certain European made games that were remakes or further entries in series that began on the microcomputers like the C64 and Speccy, but you'd think one of the biggest Sega franchises would get a world wide release.
Supposedly back then, Nintendo of America had some sort of thing going on where if you wanted to release your game on NES you couldn't have it on the Master System, so game companies had to choose one or the other
19:52 the popcorn's almost ready
Ahhh, Fantasy Zone. My teen years remember that game well.
Great vid SLX. You always show a game or two that I never played back in the day... But am going to try now!!! Thanks 🎮👍
You consistently put out great videos multiple times a week. Great work.
LOL you can tell Blaster Master 2 was developed by a Euro dev by the water droplets that hurt you. someone needs to tell those hippies that showers dont hurt.
😂😂😂😂😂😂
That first Western-developed Batman game has that too. Sure tale tell of a Euro dev studio.
It's interesting that each area of the world had completely different game design tropes. I wonder how it happened. I suppose the European ones all came from the microcomputer games, the C64 and Spectrum and BBC Micro and so on. The platformers on those systems were very slow, very deliberate, usually with one hit deaths, and so it made some sense to have something like water/acid drops as an easy obstacle. If anything they're just like the fireballs in bowsers castle in mario, they just go up and down, it's a good basic obstacle to put in a game.
Hahha
😂😂😂👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Once again man, your videos are great, thoughtful and super informative. Anyway, Panorama Cotton is my winner from this video. I always imagined my Mega Drive actually smoking or shorting out because so many things were happening on screen that the system just shouldn't be able to do. I'm truly impressed with that game.
Really glad you chose Sunsoft.
Some of these games are so colorful, I can't believe they're on the Geni' !
Games I really want to play now: Kamakozi Squirrel, Panarama Cotton, and Batman.
Good stuff!!!
BTW, not sure why there was never a Marvel vs. DC fighting game...
Lol marvel vs. dc?!?!? That would be a licensing nightmare! Can you imagine what would happen if The developer screwed over ANY character in the story ie. Superman losing to iron man, or batman losing to hawkeye? No self respecting company would allow a third party to make a cross over game with their competition. That's like making a licensed Hollywood movie about Macdonalds vs. Burgerking. You Will never see it!!
Keep on rocking mate, loving all the constant content👌🏻
The boss music in Super Fantasy Zone is utterly amazing. Interesting to learn that they created their own sound tech for this and Batman.
I wonder if the homebrew people have access to this?
It's crazy how the company that was outsourced to port Return of the Joker from the 8-Bit NES managed to downgrade both the audio and visuals when it became Revenge of the Joker on the 16-Bit Genesis.
Please do a video of Ranking "Every Sega Master System Video Game Boxarts" Worst to Best. I wanted to see if there are some best Boxart designs in the Sega Master System looked like since I did heard allot of people didn't like the Sega Master System Video Game Boxarts.
You deserve more subs your videos are no nonsense straight to the point and very well made I always love finding hidden gem Chanel’s on the site and ones that touch on the Saturn as a Recent SEGA fan I’m very glad There’s a good bunch off people who like this stuff keep up the good work
Superman on Sega is actually one of my favorite games of all-time. I got it in 2018 and it took me close to a year to beat it. I'm 37 and can't believe I missed that one as a kid, but am glad I caught up with all these years later. You gotta have a turbo controller to beat it, though. I can't imagine beating Brainiac without it. I think it's the perfect game of length and difficulty. I love the graphics and music. To me, the music is up there with Beavis & Butt-Head on Sega and Maniac Mansion on NES (which is and probably always will remain my all-time favorite game.) Speaking of Maniac Mansion, I really wanna play that Scooby Doo game now. It looks so much like MM. That's definitely the next game I'm gonna get.
Yeah, Travellers Tales seem to be the only Western developer to truly squeeze everything out of the Mega Drive.
Shame Sega never used them like Nintendo used Rare.. minus the whole screwing them over part. They should've had the Sonic game on Saturn from the start
Scooby-Doo Mystery is the shit. Just wish there had been four or five chapters instead of only two.
I would really love to see you implement a visual timeline in this style of video, to show just when each game came out. You could probably just draw a simple line across the screen, with art covers placed along the timeline based on the date they were released in relation to each other. That would be a very cool feature indeed and would give us a visual representation of a publishers work for the system. Make it happen man! Your video's will be all the better for it! :) Fantastic work thus far though man, I absolutely love your content!
That Death of Superman game looks like it was for another character entirely and Superman added at the last minute. Great video.👍
I have been researching Sunsoft's history for 4,5 years. It's interesting that they released more games for Mega Drive/Genesis than on SNES. They were so prolific on the Famicom/NES. The reason is that most of the Mega Drive games that was made by other studios for Sunsoft was hired by Sunsoft of America. And since the Genesis was more popular than the SNES in the US I'm guessing they wanted games for it first. A game called Superman was announced for the SNES too but wasn't even developed. And the unreleased verison of Revenge of the Joker for SNES was even worse than the Genesis version.
@Benjamin Owuye Jagun I was there, and thats exactly what happened. The donkey kong country commercials even made fun of the genesis the same way sega made fun of nintendo in the very beginning. Other notable snes games include killer instinct and yoshi's island. These games and of course donkey kong country MADE people buy the snes.
In the case of superhero games of that era that weren't just about beating things up and had a decent single player campaign it was essentially Batman on the Megadrive and Spider-Man on the Megadrive neck and neck.
You're absolutely right, SLX. Only towards the end of Genesis' life cycle did the US and Euro software houses caught up to the Japanese as far Genesis/MD development and started putting out great-looking and sounding Genesis games like Earthworm Jim, Vectorman, Comix Zone, Batman & Robin, Mega Turrican and Flink. Shiny/Virgin were definitely an early trend-setter with Alladin... Until then, you literally had to watch out for Western-developed games in order to stay far away if you valued your fun, eyes and ears. Luckily, usually even the box art and screenshots were enough to tell after a bit of practice. What got me the most is Sega of America themselves choosing to publish junk like Fantasia, Greendog, Cyborg Justice and Chakan instead of localizing Monster World IV, Panorama Cotton, Alien Soldier, Super Fantasy Zone, Pulseman, Magical Troll, Gley Lancer and so many others. Gunstar Heroes only made it after a single SoA producer took in up a personal project! Those early to mid-period Western-developed game are still living up to the erroneous stereotypes and doing their damage to Genesis' reputation, literally turning a younger generation of retrogamers away from the platform.
Prizrak it's very sad, but very true. Most of these games were probably better off not even being developed at all. The Gen/MD reputation is definitely not what it should be especially in the US. Whenever I get the chance, I always try to point ppl towards Japanese releases, it's annoying to see Gen Top 10 videos, and most of the list is clogged up with western mediocrity, most of the time that is the case. It paints a false image as you said, to the quality of the system overall.
I remember the Batman Genesis game not being able to come out in the US at the time in EGM and the like. I think my expectations were a little unrealistic by the time it came out here because it had been built up so much.
Sega Lord X is one of the most consistent youtubers out. Much respect
Sunsoft has programmed also some very good SNES games, like the decent port of World Heroes (part 1) and the beat 'em up version of Pirates of Dark Water.
I bought a copy of Batman Revenge of the Joker from Japan. Its complete with artwork and Japanese manual.
I did some research and it was made exclusively in Japan for Sega MD fans. It was a limited Print run. Its very cool to have a Japanese community company game
That "Zero the Kamikaze" game gets re-skinned and sold as "Crashbandicoot" on Aliexpress 😂
I've played the rom and as far as I can tell - they literally only change the title!
Worst. Hack. Ever. 😉
Revenge of the Joker was actually a great game on the NES!
Yes it is! Of course, it has its own probles but Nes version is 200% better
19:03 Oh my god.
I played that game on my childhood (the SNES version tho) and never noticed that
Wow that is the definition of a mixed bag!
I've always liked the native sound on the Genesis than I did on the SNES. It sounded crisper, bass sounded deeper, and the stereo fuller. I did hate how all the digitized voices and sound effects sounded really tinny on the Genesis. The SNES did it much better.
When you compare games like Earthworm Jim, the genesis did that kind of music much better. As you say you could actually hear the bass, and the SNES ones sounded muffled. But the SNES was better at orchestral music. So it depends what your going for. Kinda makes sense so many JRPGs were on the SNES because of how good it was at orchestral stuff, and so you ended up with amazing soundtracks like Chrono Trigger. But then for rock music, funk, electronic, anything like that, the Genesis was king.
I never really even thought about or cared about digitised speech back then. I do t see why so many developers thought it was a really cool idea that'd make their game seem advanced or something. As a kid I didn't care at all. I just cared if the actual music was good.
The hardware of the Gen/Md itself, is perfectly capable of clean voices. But because I'm not a programmer, I can't explain why, but I'm assuming it was more challenging to achieve.
Games with great voice include, Demonition Man, Comix Zone, Vectorman 2, the new Xenocrisis game, SF2 with new voice patch, Sonic intro screen etc. But yes, in Japanese hands, its 2 sound chips certainly deliver clearer audio over most Snes games, without doubt.
@Shawn Macdonald Why don't we at least try to be objective here and leave personal feelings aside...
Compare the guitars in Mega Man X, any song, to Metal Squad or Evil Destroyer in Thunder Force IV. Or Stand Up Against Myself, and still tell me any Snes guitar besides maybe "Rock & Roll Racing" sounds any near as clean and clear. Play it with quality speakers (not your phone for ex), turn up the volume and really listen. Sure there are other Snes exceptions out there, but it's not enough to change the narrative.
Snes handles orchestral music super well. But rock/metal/electronica is not its strength. Gotta just accept it, appreciate both consoles, and move on.
@Benjamin Owuye Jagun yeah, and those "real instrument samples" don't have the clarity or volume of the synth from a MD realism be damned. The games you mentioned do sound good. But most including MMX arent that special and it should be obvious.
@@duffman18 You said it best, man. I've said that same thing about the orchestral and rock thing before. I'd love to hear Maniac Mansion on NES did Sega style.
The first Batman I played it through back then. It was one of my favorite games on the Megadrive (Brazil). The first Superman I played it a lot too but could never end It unfortunately. I got a Megadrive III and a rereleased Megadrive 2017. I am a fan of that console. Great video!!!
With Justice League I never understood how the title screen and after match result screen music could be so awesome, while the ingame stage music was so weak. o_O
great video, love me some Genesis! congratulations on over 50,500 subs!
Sunsoft really knew what they were doing when it came to sound. Most of their games have absolutely stellar music, specially for the NES! I have the Journey to Silius title screen music stuck in my head as we speak!
The Superman game soundtrack is SO GOOD right there on the top of the console best ost
I remember playing aero and giving up lol games were tough back then
Superman is great! One of my fav Sega game soundtracks as a kid, too. The controls may take some time to learn, but overall it's a really well designed game with a solid difficulty balance. I've always wondered why it's talked about so little. Even when the AVGN made his Superman video, it kinda bugged me that he said there just aren't any good Superman games, without ever mentioning the Sunsoft one on the Genesis.
Scooby Doo Mystery is a really slept on title.
Not even 2 minutes in and I assume the video is already over and you're scrolling your usual end credits.
Panorama Cotton is one of the most technically impressive games on the
Mega Drive. I really don't know why some developers were kind of lazy
and used the awful GEMS sound driver when creating music for the Sega
Genesis games, and mislead gamers to think all Genesis games had
terrible music and sound effects, but games like Batman, Streets of Rage
1& 2, Sonic 1~3, Sword of Vermillion, Phantasy Star II,III and Ps
IV all disproved that...
Btw The Sega Genesis *did* have a computer mouse accessory :
segaretro.org/images/c/c1/Mega_Mouse_US_Box.jpg
Never knew there were any games released only in Australia! Also, I'm really proud of myself for having played a Genesis game that Sega Lord X hasn't played before...Bubble and Squeak! Never could get past level 5 or so...
Always wanted to try out that Cotton game
I like it that you put the game on the screen, easy like this !
I grew up with Nintendo, so I haven't really gotten into Genesis/Mega Drive until fairly recently. I love it! There are so many quality games! I'm gonna have to hunt down Batman. The music sounds incredible!
Great Sunsoft also known back then as Sun Electronics also made an arcade favorite called Kangaroo, too bad that fun loving video game never got a port for the NES and the Sega Master system, well if Sunsoft where to port Kangaroo on the Master then it will be moving ahead before porting Batman on the Sega Genesis 3 years later and it is the only Sunsoft game on the Atari consoles and the only Sunsoft game on the Atari 2600 as other early Sunsoft games.
Please check out Kangaroo it is a game about a mother Kangaroo saving her son from monkies similar to Donkey King Jr from Nintendo that DK Jr saves his dad from Mario, but instead Sunsoft's Kangaroo game is the mother saving her child kidnapped by monkies.
Point n click adventure games usually transitioned awkwardly on consoles, with the exceptions of ones with supported control methods for that system, or used traditional movement controls like what Telltale started doing with their adventure games by 2009.
Also, Super Fantasy Zone was awesome and I wish Sega would give it as much love for their re-releases like with the original arcade game, cause I think it's just as, if not better than the first game!
For those that don't know, Panorama Cotton now has an english patch for it and you can play it on the real console if you're using the everdrive carts. 👍
Sunsoft had always been great for music since the NES years. Just listen to the music for Journey to Silius for the NES and you won’t believe it was coming from that system.
Sega LordX supports the mega drive and master system big time and that surprises me, I would think he would focus way more in the Saturn and Dreamcast.
Thanks for this video, Sunsoft was such a big part of my childhood. I will never forget the music in the original Sunsoft Batman game. Even as a adult now some 30yrs later, I still find myself humming it.
Superman on the Genesis is still probably the best Superman gave ever made :)
@Benjamin Owuye Jagun There's actually a pretty good C64 game that was only let down by load times, which if you played it on a tape drive were brutal
I was just playing many of these games today! I've been sorting out my Mega Drive games on the Retro Arch emulator, and half of these ended up being deleted because they're just not good enough lol. Panorama Cotton looks amazing btw, like it's graphically between a MD and Saturn game.
The Yamaha sound chip was very unique.
Couldn't hold up to the SNES's on most games I mean there are exceptions streets of rage and Shafow run to name a few.
My old ears though still feel the C64 sound chip was the sound chip in the 80 early 90s that set the standard for excellence. Nothing really compared to that beast,
It's the one thing that made the limited graphix of the c64 stand out amongst the competition.
But oh boy the q6 bot graphix for Genesis Mega drive ruled the roost for a long time in my youth..
Great video Mr Lord X.
Lemmings forvthe genisis was probably my favorite nome PC port of that game.
Sunsoft are known for their killer videogame music.
Another great video!!! Still have plans to do a "First 10 Dreamcast games" video?
I played superman the first one in this video for the genesis it is a great game but you need a game genie cheat to pass the last level to beat it.
It's damn near impossible to make a brawler on the same system as Streets of Rage 2.
I love how all these creators love that these games a hard. That’s why I have never really gotten into video games. Life is tuff enough , I want something easy , to erase my stress . And there’s no such thing as easy with these old sega , and Nintendo games.
I agree completely with all points in this video, Sunsoft's quality got worse and worse as the Mega Drive/Genesis went on and it's sad to think that only 4 of all those games they had something to do with used their own in-house sound driver, (Batman, Super Fantasy Zone, Lemmings and Superman). Bubble And Squeak gets a pass in sound from me because Matt Furniss got hired to do the music to that one and he saved the audio from being another GEMS stinker. Interesting that Batman Return Of The Joker had music by Tommy Tallarico and I didn't think that ost was that bad but the actual gameplay and presentation is really bad!
They were once a great Japanese company that developed top-notch games but once they started publishing only and stopped developing games their quality was definitely affected and turned them from fresh fruit into sour grapes. Great video SegaLordx.
It really is a good question near the end whether US developers had ears. It's amazing what was considered suitable for release in some cases. I think good music was a low priority for both developers and gamers in the US. And I think that mentality came from the fact that you obviously can't convey the game's sound in screenshots, which were a primary way of getting players interested via magazines and game boxes. But I think great sound mattered more to people, even if they didn't realize it at the time, and why some games had more staying power and the ability to keep bringing players back to play again. I didn't always know how to pick games with quality sound, but I knew what was great and what was awful when I heard it, and games with great sound, such as Shinobi 3 were games that I could always return to and enjoy.
As for the whole video, very good work here. Very interesting to hear about all the games Sunsoft was involved with.
My favourite games on the Mega Drive have music that has stuck with me. Road Rash II, Streets of Rage, Sonic 2, Superman, Aladdin and the Lion King were so good in the audio department.
Sunsoft's Superman game is extra interesting considering Virgin Interactive ported it down to the Master System for Europe. Much of the level design itself is the same, but they changed a heeeaap of stuff (the first level is set at night instead of day etc.)
Ive been meaning to say this for a while but that intro is dope man
Man, I didn't know about most of these games. I have a Megadrive. I loved Blaster Master on my NES. The Return of the Joker, it's a good game on the NES (looks great too) so it's weird to hear that it fails on the Megadrive.
Daze Before Christmas is super fun! Just played it for the first time this week. It's kind of offbeat with weird levels and cool level designs. Definitely worth a look. It's also mad expensive so definitely get that emulator
Aero the Acrobat 2 is a fantastic game. The first one is fine but rough in comparison.
4:18 The music is the exact same as Sonic 3D Blast Special Stage
Love your videos, Man.
Man, I recall wondering with my friends what happened to the Genesis sound after 1991 or so, early Sega Genesis games sounded in general way better than the later ones, Sunsoft is a breat example of this decline, so are Streets of rage 2 going on to SoR 3... Super Shinobi to Shinobi 3.. and many more.
May be wrong here, but I believe in the early years they used lots of samples instead of using the default “midi”-like the system offered. Heck, in no other game I recall such heavy drums as in the Road Rash intro. Then RR3 came with the worst guitar+drums sounding ever with the default “midi”-like music... maybe the latter games used so much space that music samples were discarded in order to make room for bigger games
@@ahirunakamura9592
Genesis has only a single digital sample channel that replaced one of the 6 FM channels when in use. Also, 4 PSG channels. The sample channel was most commonly used for an instrumental "oomph" early on but then started being used mostly for voices and realistic sound effects. The whole sound hardware war more of an instrument than a playback device. Like any instrument It took skill to "play" it. Most of the Western devs couldn't and used a GEMS driver that gave them sound fonts and presets to play around with, automating the hard work and turning it into a playback device. Unfortunately, it was extremely deficient at first and too easily to abuse by lazy devs. They kept improving this driver though and many Western devs began to get really good results with it towards the end of the system's life. None ever topped the Japanese FM+PSG virtuosos though.
@@Prizrak-hv6qk Some of the later Gems soundtracks had the best combination of music, voice samples and sound effects on the system. Comix Zone, The Ooze, X-Men 2, Vectorman 1/2, Demolition Man, Aladdin, ToeJam and Earl 2, MK 3, Madden 96.
SOR 3 had bad music? I think you might be deaf. Some of those tracks were solid gold. Was it better than SOR 2 all together? You have to understand what they were going for with SOR 3. They were trying to cram ALOT into the game, and also craft music that fit the setting of the level. Like the first level in streets of rage 3 sounds like a rush to the bomb, The second stage sounds like the deadly streets of the city, the dance hall sounds like a dance hall, the boss theme sounds like a serious battle, The underground path sounds like a shady way to travel, the samurai battle sounds like a samurai battle etc. When they reuse music later in the game, it still fits the scenario. They also had to work around hardware limitations, while giving you (6) playable characters, multiple paths, multiple endings, New moves, animations and enemies. And FULL story with cut scenes. SOR 2 just sent you straight to the end. And while the music was top notch, It also had stage themes completely out of place. There was a cave in streets of rage 2 with party music in it, and the final level reused the games intro music, when it should have used the elevator music from the end of stage 7. The music was all over the place. Do these guys wanna dance, or take down a shadow syndicate filled with murderers. I give my best to the composer, but I think they shoved all the music in to fill up cart space. There are even unused tracks, in the sound test.
Ah, ok Lemmings; how did they manage to break the 64 sprite limit? There are levels where you’re dealing with 99!lemmings.
11:55 Daze before Christmas? Is this a game about Santa being a stoner?!
I love their Scooby Doo adventure game... Very similar to LucasArts point and clicks like Day of the Tentacle. It's great!
Never miss a chance to cover Genesis Batman! I'm not complaining, though. Aero was better on GBA, though.
Sunsoft will always have a place in my heart.
Great video, I have a cuestion, How Shit pass this part? ( 10:27 )
Lemmings on the Sega Genesis was an excellent port.
Sega Lord X have you ever noticed on the back of the Batman box, the screenshots are of the NES version?
There's a good cover of Enter Zero from Zero the kamikaze squirrel by Anton Norling here on RUclips. Apparently the creator of Aero actually commented on the video as well. Check it out!
Batman of Sega Megadrive... The best soundtrack ever in a game cartridge🎮
Regarding blaster master 2 don’t forget about the drops of water from the ceiling that harm you. Even when in the tank! LOL. The hell where they thinking?
Sunsoft clearly lost their magic after 8bit
Great feature Sega Lord X! I like your content.